George Lynch: ‘I Was Never Really a Stryper Fan, But I Realized Michael Sweet Was Really Good’

The worlds of rock and metal can sometimes make strange bedfellows. Dokken guitar great George Lynch has teamed up with the powerful pipes of Stryper's Michael Sweet for a second time, issuing their Unified album last month. But Lynch had a confession to make in a recent interview, telling Ultimate Guitar that he wasn't really a fan of Stryper prior to working with Sweet.

"We were aware of each other and I was aware of Stryper through the '80s and '90s. I think the first time I saw them was on a local cable show called the Wally George Show," recalled Lynch. "Honestly, I was never a Stryper fan but I realized Michael was really good at what he did as far as being a great melodic power singer."

The guitarist added, "He was a great melodic power singer. In later years when I was out of Dokken and had an occasional opportunity to think about writing and recording some music in the 'Dokken vein' quote unquote, I would think about Michael sometimes as a potential partner because of his style being in the same universe as the Dokken genre and melodic hard rock."

Lynch reveals that he and Sweet had been in contact about working together for a while before Sweet & Lynch came about, at one point circling a project that included fellow Dokken rockers Jeff Pilson and Mick Brown. But after doing their debut disc Only to Rise with bassist James Lomenzo and Brian Tichy they decided to keep things intact for their second album.

The guitarist says he also doesn't view Sweet & Lynch as a band in the traditional sense, nor is his continued work with KXM a band either. "Brian, James and I have played together multiple times in other projects but we're not a band nor are we becoming a band. Now there is a hybrid version of that, which is what KXM does. We are also not really a band in the true sense like Korn is or King's X is but we just come together every couple of years, meet in the studio like ships in the night and two weeks later we're gone," says Lynch. "But we write everything together as a band so that's sort of a hybrid way of doing it. That works well for that project but I would not do that with Sweet & Lynch because there are too many unknowns and too many things that could go sideways."

Sweet & Lynch issued their sophomore set, Unified, back in early November. You can watch their video for the song "Walk" right here.